Johannes Schmoelling at the Film Festival Braunschweig

Siggi Lindhorst took the chance to see Johannes Schmoelling after the Thief performance at the Film Festival in Braunschweig (Brunswick, Germany, near Hanover) on Wednesday evening. He reported:

After the show in the "Cinemaxx", Johannes came up in front of the spectators and a talkmaster asked him some questions about the film and about TD's soundtrack work. Unfortunately, there was only few time for that because the next film should start soon after Thief, but Johannes and a handful of enthusiasts went on to a pub to continue the discussion there in a less official mood.

Johannes described his feelings towards the film as "strange" after so many years -- at least 20 years have passed since Thief was released. He surprised the audience when he said that he saw the film for the first time in cinema format; he only remembered the video/cutting cassette which TD had used for the soundtrack production back in 1981 and that he saw the film once on TV several years later.

For Thief and some other productions of that period, Johannes said that he was the one who did most of the melodies and structures, while Edgar turned out to be more the man for the "soundscapes." Johannes said "Klangmaler" which means something like "painter with sounds." According to him, Chris Franke's part were mostly the drum patterns.

Johannes admitted that he was quite surprised by the final track playing during the credit notes: "I did not have that in mind any more", he said. The reason is that this music -- titled Confrontation -- in fact was not produced by TD but by Craig Safan and was added to TD's soundtrack later. Record collectors know that the track appears on some Thief LP releases in certain countries, but not on all.

About his future plans Johannes said that he is going to establish an own record label. He said he has ideas for some releases not only of new, but also of some older material which he has composed for theater plays -- his main field -- and TV scores since he left TD.